Throughout the week, our team shares articles they’ve stumbled upon that may interest our readers, even if they might not otherwise merit a full post. Here are some of the posts we found interesting this week: Reciprocal lounge access, what is Hyatt loyalty worth, and JetBlue sweet spots.
Reciprocal Lounge Access Policies Really Are Still Sort Of A Secret, Eh?
In this little PSA, Ben at One Mile at a Time marvels at how few people seem to know about reciprocal lounge access policies, which could save them from the overcrowded lounge of the airline they’re flying. For example, with his recent Thai Airways flight, he noticed that the Thai Airways lounge was uncomfortably crowded while the other lounges he could access thanks to the Star Alliance reciprocal access policy (Turkish and EVA Air) were nearly empty! Next time you fly Business Class with an airline that’s part of a major alliance, don’t forget about the reciprocal lounges you may be able to access!
Gary of View from the Wing gave an interesting breakdown of what Hyatt’s internal Hyatt Place Franchise Document says about the value of your loyalty. The first point he makes is that, according to the internal owner guide, 51% of revenue (across all Hyatt Place properties) comes from World of Hyatt members. That’s a compelling number, but he goes on to break down some of the costs of these member bookings. For example, each hotel must pay “a 4% assessment on eligible revenue from World of Hyatt members, or 2% on the enrolling stay when a guest signs up on property.”
He goes on to say:
…a disproportionate amount of that comes from frequent guest versus one-off customers who join the program for a single stay. They’re worth treating better – at least, they would be, if the same entity was bearing the cost of treatment and the benefit of their revenue. However,
- The benefit of a loyal Globalist is spread across the entire Hyatt ecosystem over years.
- The cost of honoring elite benefits on a given night — room upgrades, late checkout, breakfast (now that it’s not provided to every guest at every Hyatt Place), extra staffing time — is borne almost entirely by that night’s property.
In other words, there’s a cost to accommodating World of Hyatt guests, which makes sense across an entire portfolio of properties, but may feel like a heavy lift on an individual basis. And the participating hotels are held accountable for how well they meet the expected criteria for guest satisfaction. If they fail to meet standards, it can get very expensive for the hotel as they’ll need to pay $45,000 in additional fees per year AND pay for additional training or inspections to restore themselves to the expected standards. This just scratches the surface of all the different points of interest uncovered by Gary from this internal document, so check out the full post for more.
My Favorite Use of Capital One Miles – JetBlue Mint for a STEAL
You’ll find lots of good stuff about booking JetBlue with JAL in this post, with sweet spots like East Coast to the Caribbean in Mint for 42,000 miles round-trip in business class. Dave focuses on Capital One miles for his examples, but with the Rakuten partnership, Bilt is more relevant than ever for this.
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The reciprocal lounge access thang is very interesting. Like very very. Who knew???